We are big into Legos over here. Finn was bit by the Lego bug right before he turned four, and after getting Legos for his birthday, he has amassed an impressive collection. I despise picking teeny bricks out of the carpet. I loathe fishing them out of the air registers. And when I step on one in the middle of the night?  He’ll hath no fury like a barefoot mother piercing her foot with a Lego. And yet, they keep Finn entertained for hours on end – sometimes for an entire day. The return on investment is pretty good for a set of Legos. It’s worth the pain.

Nathan gets pretty into it, too. Whenever we are in Denver, we always seem to make time for the Lego store. I watch Nathan fawn over the giant train sets, intricate camper vans and Lord of the Rings battle scenes. I know what he is thinking.  Soon…  Soon.

Me?  I’m partial to the Lego men. Minifigures, I’ll have you know. Don’t think the extraordinarily nerdy thirtysomething working at the Lego store won’t correct you if you refer to them as Lego Men. Whatever you want to call them, they are adorable. Finn has a small army built up.  Right after I realized that you could order almost any Lego piece ever made on their website (through the “Missing Pieces” department), my mind went to the only natural place a Minifigure-super-dweeb’s brain could go.  Hell yeah…  I’m making US out of Lego men. 

And so, our first family portrait was born. Seriously… Since Alice was born there hasn’t been a single picture taken of all six of us.

It was almost if it was meant to be. I spent an entire nap time digging through the online Lego archives, picking out the perfect hair, accessories and shirts for our Lego family.  And two weeks later, I got a padded envelope from Denmark containing our family’s Lego DNA.

We all turned out pretty cute. But Nathan – ohmygod. It is as if Nathan was always meant to be a Lego man.

I turned out just peachy.

The kids were adorable.

And Walter and violet? Spot on. Lego only makes two different dogs, and they are almost perfect matches for Waltie and Vi. (Not that anyone would ever mistake Dub-ya for a German shepherd, but the color is right.  And his ears stick up.  So humph.)

I made a shadow box out of an Ikea frame by gluing paper-wrapped chipboard just behind the glass to act as a spacer.

I used Command Strips to attach the Lego men to a piece of white cardstock.  Since both Alice and I had a ponytail, I had to stack the strips four high for us to sit level.

And poof…  Once I mounted them on the cardstock, I realized this was hella better than a 20×30 portrait of us in matching denim shirts above the fireplace.

The only bummer?  The frame wasn’t deep enough to accommodate Nathan’s coffee mug, my camera, Finn’s sword and Alice’s (wait for it….) banana.  Which is fine, since a banana is pretty lame in the way of Lego accessories.

Now it graces our bookshelf in the living room.  I’m a terrible parent for putting it there, though.  Both Alice and Finn desperately want to play with them, and I’m all “Leggo my Lego men, mini people!  Touch them and I will place loose Lego bricks next to your bed in the middle of the night!!”